


Glory and Gore (Go Hand in Hand)

by shewho



Series: All is Well (It’s Only Blood) [3]
Category: Blue Bloods (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Male-Female Friendship, Non-Canonical Character Death, Not Established Relationship, Off-screen death, POV Multiple, Police Procedural, Siblings, Smoking, Tags Contain Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 09:04:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8973406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewho/pseuds/shewho
Summary: Danny desperately wishes he could say it was foreign – that gleam in his father’s eyes, the rapid blinking, the way the man drops his head to sigh heavily into one rough palm – but he can’t, he can’t, because they’ve been here before, they’ve felt this pain before.





	1. Eddie Janko

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Part Three of “All is Well (It’s Only Blood)”, the massive fic re. the death of your favorite baby Reagan and mine, Jamie! This is a rather lengthy, drawn-out grief-fest of ancient mythic proportions. In this part, you will see: Erin Reagan being informed of her baby bro’s death, a couple of Eddie Janko scenes feat. Sgt. Anthony Renzulli, special guest stars ie; the entire Reagan family ensemble, and a whole mess of crossover vignettes.

The doctors insist on checking her over once IAB finishes with their interrogation. Her blood pressure’s good, even though her heartrate’s still a little bit jacked. They take samples for a blood alcohol analysis, but it’s pretty clear to everyone that she’s painfully sober. Other than a couple of gravel scrapes on her knees, there’s not a mark to be found. Absolutely none of the blood dried under her nails and up her arms and in the creases of her palms belongs to her.

Everybody keeps telling Eddie how fortunate she is and she doesn’t understand why. They tell her she’s living under a bright and shining lucky star, hand her the business card of a trauma counselor, and inquire if she needs anything else.

Eddie asks to clean up and is immediately led to a deep stainless-steel sink. Alcohol wipes can only do so much for a girl, after all. She _hates_ that she’s covered in it, hates to think about where all that blood came from, about who the blood running off her hands and forearms belongs – _belonged_ – to as she scrubs and scrubs, from her fingertips up over her elbows to her shirt cuffs until the skin aches and she reeks of industrial-strength antimicrobial soap.

Until she’s absolutely sure that every trace of Jamie Reagan’s blood is physically gone from her hands.

It remains, though, in every metaphorical Macbethian sense.

She wipes her hands on an inordinate number of paper towels, watches until the hospital staff are out of sight, then gives in to the desperate shaking of her knees and slides down the wall to the cool linoleum tiles. Willing herself to stop shivering, Eddie winds her arms around her body. She’s exhausted and she stinks, needs a shower in the worst kind of way, but she’s buzzing, still coming down off the high of adrenaline and horror.

For what feels like the longest time, she does nothing but stare at her hands in her lap. The callouses that’ve begun to develop from years of putting in a minimum five hours a week on the gun range. The faint scar on her palm where she caught it fence hopping after a suspect last March. The short nails, picked and bitten down near the quick rather than neatly clipped; a total turn-off, she’s been told. As hard as she scrubbed, there are still faint traces of blood around her cuticles.

“Eddie!”

Her name echoes through the hallway as Renzulli rounds a corner to find her still sitting on the floor leaned up against one of the pale walls, jolting her out of her fugue.

“Sarge,” she croaks quietly, her voice still shot to shit.

“Hey, hey!” Renzulli calls, “I come bearing gifts.” In one hand he balances two cups of – presumably – coffee; in the other, he’s got a pair of plastic grocery bags, cinched tightly at their tops. “I, uh, I brought whatever sweats were in your locker,” he explains, tossing one of the shopping bags into her lap. “And I raided Jamie’s locker as well. Always nice to have some pants in the hospital, ya know? Gettin’ shot sucks.”

There’s an aching finality in her tone when she mumbles, “Really wouldn’t know firsthand, Sarge.”

“So whadda the docs say? How’s your partner?” Renzulli asks, offering her a styrofoam cup of hospital-cafeteria-grade coffee-sludge.

Her eyes narrow as she takes a small sip, staring at the other bag tied shut and slung casually over the sarge’s wrist. The coffee is lukewarm and tastes like metal. Maybe it’s a lingering aftertaste of Jamie’s blood. She can’t really be sure.

“Dead.”

The sergeant’s face twists in shock. Fumbling with his coffee cup, Renzulli looks horrified even though Eddie knows he’s trying to mask his reaction.

She laughs.

She _laughs_ , and the sound comes out twisted and unhinged and pained, and she hates herself for sounding that way. “FUCK!” she screams, whipping her cup against the far wall.

It smashes on impact with an unsatisfying crunch of crumpling styrofoam and room-temp coffee.

She can’t believe this is fucking happening. She can’t believe that he’s really, honestly _dead._

“Eddie?” Renzulli asks. The younger officer snaps open her eyes, only just then realizing that they’ve somehow fallen shut. From the look of concern on the sergeant’s face, this isn’t the first time that he’s called Eddie’s name.

“They shot him. Like it was nothing.”

Renzulli drops into a squat in front of her and clasps her shoulder, his hand warm and heavy. “C’mon, Eddie,” he says thickly, offering her his own cup. “It’ll be okay.” The sarge’s voice is low, choked, and it kills her to hear him like that. From this close, she can see his throat working, see the moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes.

She pops the lid, tilts her head back, and drinks deeply, the cup shaking in her bloodstained hand.

“C’mon, get up; go change. You’ll feel better,” Renzulli insists, even though they both know that changing out of her bloody uniform won’t make a  damn bit of difference.

“Sarge,” she manages as she stands, turning to head for the ladies’ room, “I’m sorry.”

He just shakes his head, “Me too, kiddo.”

*

It’s only after she’s changed and stuffed her uniform into the plastic bag Renzulli brought her street clothes in that Eddie finds herself kneeling before a toilet, nausea making her head whirl, sanity feeling like spider-webbing glass ready to shatter in the back of her mind. She gags a few times but nothing comes up.

She and Jamie, they never made it to lunch.


	2. Danny Reagan

Eventually, he makes his way back to the ER waiting room. Eddie Janko and her defiant blue stare are nowhere to be seen.

The distinct _ping_ of an elevator’s arrival causes his ears to prick up, and he lifts his gaze as the doors part to reveal his little sister. Her face is filled with naked hope, and he feels it like a sucker punch to the gut, with the same sharp pain, same rushing in his ears, same sick sense of everything lurching beneath him.

Danny sighs heavily, raking a hand through his hair and standing much of it on end. His heart begins to race, thundering within his chest. This is it. The moment of truth. Of course it’s Erin. Of course Erin is the first one he’ll have to slaughter with his news, with the horrible information he possesses.

“Danny!” she calls, not-quite-running towards him, her heels clicking sharply against the floor. “Hey! What’s the word on Jamie?”

His eyes sting as he turns away, throat tightening.

“What’s the matter?” Erin asks, dark eyes going soft with concern. “Is he still in surgery?”

Danny shakes his head. “He’s an angel now, sis,” he says, his voice sounding oddly thin.

It takes the length of a heartbeat for the words to register, but Danny can see the exact moment that they do. Erin’s eyes widen and her mouth opens wordlessly, a dark gash in her pale face. She stares at Danny like she’s never seen him before. “What?” she whispers, the single word laced with the same abject horror stamped across her features.

“No.” Before he can react, she’s slumping down into one of the chairs that line the hallway, shaking slightly, “No.” Mouth slightly agape, his sister’s eyes track over him. He’s not sure what she’s looking at. The scrapes across his knuckles, maybe.

“ _No_ ,” Erin repeats a third time, like by saying it enough times she can make him take the words back, make it go away, make it _not true_. “Danny, _no_.”

Hearing Erin talk like that is breathtakingly familiar. She’s using her closing statements summation voice, like she can just will things into being by saying them, like she can make any claim factual with the sheer force of her belief, and she’s gonna convince her audience of its certainty just for the hell of it.

He sits down hard in the chair beside her, draws her into his chest and wipes at the wetness on her cheeks. “It’s gonna be okay.” There’s a slight tremor in his hands, but his voice remains firm out of a deep seeded desperation, an unspoken need to hide the horror and pain underneath.

“Liar,” she bites out softly, the word losing most of its power when it breaks in the middle.

*

Their father arrives in his customary whirl of discreetly armed escorts, each bearing a coffee cup and suit jacket despite the heatwave holding the city hostage.

Garrett and Baker look the same as always except for the identical grim expressions gracing their faces: Garrett in slight disarray, pink-cheeked, fingers skittering over the screen of his tablet; Baker carefully put together, no hair or pleat out of place, speaking in hushed tones to whomever is on the other end of her bluetooth connection.

Frank doesn’t comment on the blood crusting black across Danny’s torn knuckles, doesn’t move to comfort an obviously distraught Erin, doesn’t say a word to anyone. Even when the grim-faced doctor reappears, his father just somberly falls in line as the doctor leads the three Reagan’s towards an anonymous set of beige doors, through another pair of doors labeled “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT”, and down the hall to a small room just off the operating wing.

It’s better than the morgue, and also worse. Better in that the lighting doesn’t make Jamie look quite so lifeless; worse by the same token. Here, it almost looks like he might heave a deep breath through his nose and blink open sleep-sticky eyelids and voice a throaty complaint about waking up with them all staring at him. Here, there’s the slimmest chance that he’s not really dead.

Only he _knows_ Jamie’s gone, he’s already done this once today, without Erin’s white-knuckle grip on his hand, and the electric crackle of fear permeating the air between them.

His father tells the staff to leave. His voice never rises above a cutting whisper, steady and cold.

Nobody dares disobey.

There’s a brief beat of stillness in the room as the door clicks closed behind the last of the staff, shuffling from the room to leave the Reagan’s to their dead. Then, beside him, Erin’s voice cracks she yells so hard, inarticulate and wordless, horrified. His sister – his sister, who he’s seen stare down armed gunmen with a bullet lodged in the muscle of her own shoulder without so much as blinking – dissolves, her knees buckling beneath her, face splitting into a silent scream as she curls in on herself, a crumpled origami of undisputable sadness and pain held up only by Danny’s bruising grip on her wrist.

“Erin,” he says, his voice cracking over her name as he pulls her to her feet, bundles her into his embrace, “Stop. Erin, please; c’mon. You have to stop.” His eyes dart over her face, and he adds, “Breathe, sis.”

“It’s not fair!” she howls into the heat of his throat, her wet eyelashes prickly against his skin. “It’s not _fair_!”

“Shhh,” he hushes gently, trying to soothe her. “I know it isn’t. I know.”

He watches over his baby sister’s shaking shoulder as their father presses a tender kiss to the crown of his son’s head.

Danny desperately wishes he could say it was foreign – that gleam in his father’s eyes, the rapid blinking, the way the man drops his head to sigh heavily into one rough palm– but he can’t, he _can’t_ , because they’ve been here before, they’ve felt this pain before.

Being a soldier and being a cop has taught him that, with repeated exposure, death becomes more and more familiar, but never any easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A moment of silence for all the shit that Garret Moore and Det. Abigail Baker have gone through and put up with under the Reagan administration. #WeLoveGarret&Baker


	3. Eddie Janko

When she wanders back from the ladies’ room, there are dozens of cops floating through the hospital halls, sequestered into groups of twos and threes, speaking quietly so as not the break the tenuous solemnity that’s settled over the entire wing. The news must’ve gone public, she realizes dully. Now everyone knows what she’s done.

Nobody says a word to Eddie as she drifts down the hall, searching for a semi-secluded spot. It’s probably for the best. She wouldn’t know what to say if they did.

*

She hears the Reagans before she sees them. The overlap of too many people crying in the restricted area behind a closed door is impossible to ignore. Eddie wants nothing more than to barge right in, but more than one doctor (and a hospital grief counselor) has expressly forbade her to enter the room because, “I’m sorry, Officer, but it’s really family only at this time.” Instead, she’s seated in the hallway outside, cross-legged on the linoleum like a troublesome child sent to time-out.

She’s still sitting there almost an hour later when she sees the doorknob finally start to turn.

*

When he opens the door, the commissioner’s eyes are red-rimmed behind his glasses and his jaw is steeled. “Officer Janko,” he says flatly, taking in her bloodstained shoes, ratty grey NYPD crewneck, and faded track pants. “Come in.”

The world whites out for a moment as she staggers to her feet, legs gone numb and fuzzy from sitting so unremittingly still. “Commissioner Reagan, sir.”

She follows him through the threshold, can’t help but immediately notice the clear signs that the Reagans have been holding court in the outer waiting area. Half-empty coffee cups litter every available flat surface. In one corner, a TV playing some claymation cartoon stands muted and glowing gently. The younger of Jamie’s nephews – _Danny’s kid_ – is curled up on the floor, sleeping. Danny’s perfect blonde wife sits on a couch that should’ve gone out with Y2K, whispering softly to a girl who can’t be more than twenty, trying to calm her as she cries big, body-heaving sobs. Henry Reagan just stares at the hideous carpet between his loafers, pointedly ignoring the pale grey door set into the far wall.

Eddie shifts agitatedly from foot to foot. Her chest feels too small for her heart, which is beating low in her throat. It’s hard to breathe around the lump of cardiac tissue. She’s also pretty sure she’s going to be sick while she waits for the commissioner to open the damned door.

The thing is, last time she saw Jamie he was still alive. Circling the drain, maybe – definitely – but _alive_.

She’s so nervous to see his body that she thinks she might vomit. _Please, God_ , she thinks. _No fucking shaking and no fucking vomiting in front of the commissioner_.

Just as her boss ushers her forward toward said door, it swings open violently. A sandy-haired teenage boy – _must be Danny’s, too_ – storms out with a terse, “Meet you down at the car,” aimed in the general direction of his mother, slamming the outer door behind him hard enough to make the glass pane in the center shudder.

Nobody makes a move stop him.

She pauses, staring blankly into the sliver of room exposed by the slowly closing door. There he is, supine form silhouetted in profile. She’d know that nose anywhere; that’s Jamie. Eddie doesn’t dare to breathe as she pulls the door open, not until she hears to close again behind the commissioner, arms tucked in tight around herself, back rigid.

Erin Reagan sits to her immediate left, bent over in the god-awful hideous hospital chair. For such a pretty woman, she’s an ugly crier. Her dark eyes are bloodshot, and her hair wild from where it appears she’s run her hands through it, repeatedly. Eddie’s never seen the normally-put-together ADA look so messy. Danny looks just as disheveled – tie almost completely unknotted, sleeves bunched up haphazardly around his elbows, specks of stubble starting to crop up all over his face – but she’s used to seeing Jamie’s brother like that.

Silence rules the room as they all stare at the body of this man, this person that they each loved, in their own way, so quiet that she can hear Danny’s teeth grinding as his jaw works back and forth. “What did he say?” he finally asks, his voice a creaking hiss in the stillness.

For a moment, a lie settles on her tongue, and she wants to look right into her boss’s eyes and say, “Your son was a hero, really truly one of New York’s finest,” with a straight face.

And while it’s not actually a lie, it’s also not really the truth. It’s better than the truth; he doesn’t need to hear the truth. He doesn’t need to hear, “Your son was shot in the street like a dog. Your son died, scared and in an obscene amount of pain. Your son was the brightest, kindest soul I have ever known, filled with good intentions, and genuine respect, and restless ambition.”

They’re words that no parent wants to hear.

But they are the truth.

Saying them aloud is a terrible idea, but Eddie’s never really been known for her stellar impulse control.

“He said that it hurt.”

Her voice sounds curiously flat, emotionless, even to her own ears.

Danny meets her eyes over his father’s shoulder, his own blazing with a fiery combination of pain and dread, the detective’s shoulders shaking harder and harder inside the material of his shirt as he forcibly holds his anguish in check. He scrubs a hand up over his mouth, wincing; she sees the sluggishly bleeding knuckles and scraped skin. Her gaze flicks down to Erin, to the teeth impressions in the woman’s bruised lower lip where she’s literally bitten it shut in an effort to keep the small whimpers from seeping out.

She doesn’t know what to say. There is nothing to say, nothing she can say that will make this better. She’s been taught her whole life to assume responsibility for her mistakes. Eddie can own up to anything so long as it’s actually her fault, she can set things to rights, she can _fix_ things, but Jamie is _dead_ , and she _cannot fix this_.

“Thank you for your candor, Officer Janko,” the commissioner responds, quiet but somehow harsh, grief and anger at the senselessness filling the lines of his shoulders with tension rather than increasing the volume of his voice.

Just like that, she’s slammed home into her body. “I’m sorry,” she says thickly, feeling her nose and throat burn. Tears pool in her eyes, blurring her vision as the mantra _you don’t belong here you don’t belong here you don’t you don’t you don’t belong_ runs over and over in her brain.

Yet here she is.

Standing over a corpse.

Because that’s all that remains of her partner. A broken, bullet-riddled, bloodied corpse. That body, it could really be anyone on the frigid slab before her because that person’s not talking or moving or breathing. It’s Jamie’s body for sure but Jamie’s not in it.

In a squeal of metal against linoleum, Erin Reagan bolts from the room just as fast as her mile-high heels can carry her, clacking against the floor in rhythm-less harmony. Amidst the silence left in her wake, Eddie realizes dumbly that _she’s_ crying now, heavy, ragged shame-filled sobs. She hiccups out a broken apology, because she’s lost her partner but the commissioner’s lost his son, _another_ son.

The man makes to grab for his son – his first son, and now his only son – ’s arm as the man turns to go after his sister. “Don’t touch me,” Danny Reagan tells his father, his eyes bright with anger and his posture tight. There’s no heat behind the words, though, only a jarring numbness.

Eddie looks down at her hands, looks up at her boss, eyes damp, heart slamming against her ribs. He looks back at her with nothing but futile anger and grief clouding his expression. “You may leave, Officer.”

She can barely get a grip on the door, her fingers shake so badly.

*

Eddie makes it home that night by instinct alone. Awareness comes in flashes, in the gaping moments between unconscious actions and she wonders, on a scale of one to five, how fucked up her life is that she has long since memorized what combination of trains it takes to get home from most area hospitals.

She doesn’t even pause to take her shoes off when she finally fumbles her front door open, just slams the door closed behind her, clicks her deadbolts closed-open-closed, and makes her way to the bedroom.

Her head hurts. From the crying, maybe, or the screaming earlier.

Beside her bed, she does finally toe off her shoes, flipping them with well-practiced aim into the corner beside her closet. She doesn’t bother with a shower, despite the fact that she desperately needs one, just plugs in her long-dead phone and collapses into bed. Hugging one pillow to her chest and tugging the blankets up over her head, she buries her face in another pillow and screams until she falls blessedly asleep.   


	4. Danny Reagan

“Danny,” Linda says, but he isn’t looking at her. He can’t look at her; he’s gonna cry if he looks at her. _“Danny.”_ When he finally blinks hard and glances down at her, she says, “He’s with Joe, you know.”

Danny just grinds his jaw.

He feels supercharged, super hostile, and he can’t be here. He has to leave or this will end badly, with Linda giving him that half-sad, half-scared look that he hates so much and his fist through the drywall. “I’m gonna take a walk,” he says. “I gotta take a walk.”

It takes him almost twenty minutes to work his way out of the maze of hallways and staircases, but once he reaches the ground floor, he doesn’t get far – just barely out the main doors and onto the sidewalk – before he spots Erin. The dark-haired woman doesn’t notice him at first. She just stares out over the hospital parking lot, her eyes empty, one hand clutching the handle of her document case white-knuckle tight. A plume of bluish smoke trails from her mouth.

As he approaches, he can see that Erin’s been chain-smoking for a while by now. The paper coffee cup at her elbow that she seems to be using as an ashtray is nearly half-full. Danny stands by, unable to wipe the dumbfounded expression from his face. “You don’t smoke. Not like this.” And she doesn’t. He hasn’t seen her light up since she was maybe twenty-two, twenty-three.

Erin turns to him, an ugly sneer upon her lips, “Yeah, well, I do today.”

He bites his lip for a moment before joining her on the austere concrete bench. “You got a smoke for your big brother?”

She won’t look at him, just glares out at the sea of cars baking under the gradually dimming July sky as she neatly flips him the pack from her briefcase and hands over the lighter, some cheap yellow plastic piece. “What’re you even doing out here, Danny?”

A one-shouldered shrug is his response. He doesn’t say, “I couldn’t watch Dad cry anymore.” He doesn’t say, “Jack ran away, and I think he might’ve stolen my car.” He doesn’t say, “I came to check on you because I’m literally scared shitless of what you might do if left unsupervised right now.” He doesn’t say, “I miss him, too.” He doesn’t say, “You’re my sister; I love you.” He doesn’t say anything, just taps out a cigarette with practiced ease and scoots closer to nudge her elbow with his.

They sit still in the muggy evening, quietly focused on smoking their respective cancer sticks down to the filter.

“You get somebody to look at your hand yet?” Erin finally asks, bending down to stub out the last of her cigarette in the grass.

“Nah,” he says, flexing his right hand lightly so as not to pull at the scabbing knuckles. “It’s not so bad, probably won’t even need stiches. Linda’s pissed, though.”

His sister snorts, “She married you; what did she reasonably expect?”

“Probably not this.”

“Yeah,” Erin concedes, “Not this.”

They stay like that for a while longer, but eventually Danny stands, offering his uninjured hand to pull Erin up to her feet.

The last two Reagan children stare at each other, an entire conversation passing unspoken between them. Revenge is irrational, futile, and ill-advised; how many times have they heard _that_ lecture, first from their mom and then from Dad?

It doesn’t matter.

Together, they have watched both their younger brothers go from womb to tomb. This cannot stand.

“I’m gonna kill ‘em,” Danny promises as they start to trudge back inside, his voice deceptively soft.

“I’ll dump the bodies,” Erin adds, gripping her brother’s forearm tight.

_We will retaliate, no matter what it costs._

_We will get revenge._

_We will have their heads._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a throw-away line in the show where Danny tells Linda that he likes smoking but he quit ‘cause it’s bad for him.


	5. Ensemble

Melinda Warner is tired of cracking open the chests of Frank Reagan’s sons.

She’s tired of pulling slugs from their bodies, of bullet fragments that rattle in evidence jars.

She’s tired of holding their hearts in her hands.

She’s tired of sliding them into cold drawers to await pickup by the Reagan family’s preferred funerary parlor.

She’s beginning to think that perhaps she’s been doing this job too long.

*

“Get me John Munch. No, I am _aware_ that he’s officially retired. Painfully so. Well, consider it a favor. A _consultation_. This is urgent.”

*

Much like his grandfather, Jack Reagan has a near-perfect memory. It’s advantageous in academic and sporting matters, helps settle familial disputes, and makes him a goddamn _delight_ at his father’s annual birthday toast-and-roast.

But it also forces him to remember every detail of his family’s reactions to Uncle Joe’s death.

He’s pretty sure at this point that his parents think he doesn’t even remember the wake or funeral. To be fair to them, he _was_ only eight, and had been tasked with minding five-year-old Seanie for the day. Today, in his mid-teens, he can trace a lot of his less healthy habits to that singular event.

The separation anxiety and fear of abandonment that followed for the next few years were nearly crippling in their intensity. He’d pretty well managed them by the time he entered junior high, but tendrils of the same fears still creep up on him once in a while. Understandably, they’re not entirely baseless fears considering his parents’ professions, particularly his father’s.

While other kids hide weed or porn in carefully concealed reliquaries, Jack Reagan keeps a palm-sized spiral notepad tucked into the slats below his bed. It’s where he keeps – carefully printed in his neatest handwriting – the names of officers killed in the line of duty.

It’s macabre, and almost stupidly unhealthy, but eight-year-old Jack thought it was the best way to remember people, and teenage Jack is still somewhat inclined to agree.

In all those years, he hasn’t forgotten a single one, speaks the names to himself in the dark of night sometimes like a demented rosary.

Tomorrow, he’ll add Jamison Reagan to the endless list.

*

It’s days like today that make Don Cragen grateful to live in a city that never, never sleeps.

After all, it’s really only here that one can find back-to-back AA meetings at one in the morning.

He can’t believe it. Nobody deserves this, least of all Frank Reagan.

*

“So they lost the Reagan boy, but the partner’s okay?”

“That’s what they’re saying. I heard she didn’t have a scratch on her,” Mike affirms before taking a big swig from his beloved blue mug. “Oh, god.”

Jack McCoy looks up in mild alarm, “What?”

“Coffee went cold on me,” the younger man replies with a self-deprecating smile.

“Shame,” McCoy says, shaking his head. They both know he isn’t only referring to the tepid beverage.

“Yeah,” Mike Cutter agrees as he stands, making his way over to the Keurig in the corner, “It really, really is.”

*

Garret Moore understands that, as morbid as it is, there is in fact a general template used to write obits for dead police officers.

He honest-to-god thought that he’d be writing Henry Reagan’s piece for the paper before he wrote Jamie Reagan’s.

*

For not the first time in her life, Linda Reagan awakens to a wail.

Initially, she’s disoriented but then the sound comes again, high and pained. And close by. Her mind makes the leap in a neuron-fast reaction: _Danny_.

She shakes him awake with haste, dodges as he flails out wildly. Her husband makes an ugly sound in the back of his throat and wrenches himself from her grasp, pulling away into a compacted ball near the foot of the bed. “It’s okay,” she says softly, even though she knows it’s not. “You’re gonna be okay.”

Danny’s eyes find her own in the pre-dawn darkness. They’re wide and frightened, but she can see _Danny_ behind them again, not the blank stare she’d first seen when the man had awoken. That unseeing gaze is one of the few things that keep Linda up at night, high on the list of things she fears most in the entire world. It’s been years now since she last saw it, but the familiarity fails to comfort her. If anything, it unsettles her _more_.

Danny ducks his head, working on slowing down his racing heartbeat and ragged breathing. He’s curled up like a fern frond, limbs pulled tight to his body. She’s sort of amazed he can fold his six-foot frame into such a small area, but she really shouldn’t be. The second time he came back from Iraq she used to find him like that all over the house: in the space between the toilet and the wall, in the kneehole of their home office desk, in the tight corners of the laundry room. Slowly, she slides down the bed next to him. “Okay to touch?” she asks, experience informing her question.

He nods, and she carefully slots her arms around him. Linda exhales some of her initial worry, suddenly just deeply, deeply exhausted. She is so goddamn _tired_ of dress blues and shiny shoes and mourning bars on shields. She’s tired of seeing her father-in-law red eyed and stoic, her husband is tears, his sister a mess. After a long time, Danny’s breathing starts to slow, and he nods again. “Okay,” he says.

“You alright?”

“’M alright.”

Danny presses himself against her shoulder until she pulls her arm tighter around him. His sweat’s gone cold, and he shivers. “I was dreamin’ we were dead, the four of us,” he mutters and her heart stutters in her chest because she, too, has had nightmares where they and their sons are all dying together. Nightmares that got especially bad after they had to pay to have a _bullet_ pried out of the backseat of their Jeep. Then he clarifies, “Joe, and Erin and me, and Jamie, all lined up under the ground beside Mom.”

She doesn’t say anything because there are no words for this particular pain. For a minute, they just lay there, until Danny sighs heavily, heaving himself into a sitting position. “Time is it?”

“Near about four.”

He scrubs a hand over his face and up into his sleep-mussed hair, collapsing back against the pillow, “Fuck.”

“Sleep, honey.” Linda presses a kiss to the widow’s peak in the middle of his forehead, hand settling against his bicep, reflexively tracing soft circles there.

“Take good care of me,” he murmurs, propping up his head on one arm. It’s not a question, it’s an affirmative statement; Linda does take good care of him.

“Somebody has to,” she slurs around a yawn, lifting his other arm up and curling in beneath it.

*

That night, after returning from the hospital and subsequently the morgue, Francis Reagan sweeps everything from his desk onto the floor in a fit of rage.

Abigail Baker sits dutifully at her post, bathed in the unnatural glow of her desk lamp, turning away any and all intruders with a mere glance and for the second time in her career listens to her boss break down behind closed doors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1)This is the dump of Dick Wolf character references! We have, in order of appearance: Dr. Melinda Warner, John Munch, Don Cragen, John James “Jack” McCoy, and Michael Cutter.
> 
> 2) “Toast-and-roast” isn’t about bread and meat; it’s a birthday tradition involving lots of toasts to the birthday-person, but also a fair amount of joking putdowns and other appropriate ‘roasting’ behavior.
> 
> 3) Man, if I have one weakness, it’s Mike Cutter. I mean, I fall into Mike Cutter ships with ridiculous ease. McCoy/Cutter? Hit me up. Erin Reagan/Mike Cutter? HIT ME UPPPPPP. Just…Mike Cutter, everybody.
> 
> 4) [ MIKE CUTTER & HIS BLUE-AND-WHITE COFFEE MUG](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_t6QUeCEttlA/SuMTY0zAivI/AAAAAAAACTg/_rc56H7ImuI/s400/dignity+law+%26+order+michael+cutter.jpg). I ship it, lol. Bless the [blue mug](http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/dignity-episode-2005-air-date-10232009-pictured-linus-roache-as-ada-picture-id141329203?s=594x594). 
> 
> 5) Full disclosure, Donnie Wahlburg is actually 5’10” (weirdly, so are Bridget Moynahan and Will Estes) but somehow I always thought he was 6’0”…? So, long story long, Donnie might be 5’10” but Danny is 6’0” (strictly because I like the alliteration of six-foot-frame better than five-ten-frame) and I KNOW that makes no sense, but bear with me here; the canon of the entire show is screwy.
> 
> 6) If it seems like there’s an inordinate amount of vomiting in this fic (?) I apologize. That’s maybe a little too much of real life bleeding into a story. I, for one, tend to classify “nausea and vomiting” as an emotion and an automatic stress response, so…if it gets unduly gross, lemme know.

**Author's Note:**

> Soft reminder: I always love hearing from you guys! 
> 
> Get psyched for Part 4, which is an anguish-heavy funeral scene as told by the last of the Reagan children (with special guest star, Jackie Curatola)!


End file.
